Melodie Edwards

Melodie Edwards grew up in Walden, Colorado where her father worked in the oilfield and timber industries. She graduated with an MFA from the University of Michigan on Colby Fellowship. She is the recipient of the Doubleday Wyoming Arts Council Award for Women and is the author of Hikes Around Fort Collins published by Pruett Publishing.

Melodie Edwards and her husband own Night Heron Books and Coffeehouse. When she's not writing, she loves to putz in the garden and hike and ski in the mountains with her daughters.

Ways to Connect

A local organization is calling for an overhaul of Wyoming’s trapping regulations, saying they haven't been updated since before the de-listing of wolves.

The group—called Wyoming Untrapped--says more people are setting traps since the de-listing of wolves, which are considered livestock predators. The increase has led to more pets caught in snares and leg holds.

The Wyoming Industrial Siting Council has approved a plan for a new ammonia plant about four miles outside Rock Springs. Simplot currently operates a phosphorous fertilizer plant on the site, and ammonia is one of the raw materials they need for production. With the cost of shipping it long distances by rail, Simplot decided to start producing their own.

Wyoming reservoirs have been spilling over with run-off from the heavy snowpack. But Bureau of Reclamation area manager Coleman Smith says they’re doing their job—capturing flood waters to reduce damage downstream.

He says when the flood waters hit Buffalo Bill Reservoir it was touch and go for a while. “We were actually releasing 400,000 cubic feet a second out of--it was going through Cody—which is a tremendous amount of water. And the Emergency Manager up there for Park County was keeping a close eye on it.”

Green River’s train depot will soon become a community center, thanks to a $200,000 grant from Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA ‘Brownfield Funds’ are given to communities to clean up contaminated industrial sites and develop them for community use.

Misty Springer is the grant specialist for Green River. She says big plans are in store for the train depot. “It’s quite exciting,” she says “It will be used hopefully we’ll have perhaps a restaurant there. There’ll be community gathering spaces, spots for incubator businesses and hopefully space for artists.”

The city of Sheridan has received a $400,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the north end of its downtown. The money will pay to assess several contaminated sites including an abandoned rail yard, sawmill and fuel storage areas that many see as slowing economic growth.

In the next half century, scientists are predicting more extreme weather for Wyoming with bigger winter storms and hotter, dryer summers. That’s according to the latest National Climate Assessment out this month. Wyoming’s farmers and ranchers are skeptical about climate change, but some of them have been forced to adjust their methods of production.

Several residents have been asked to evacuate their homes in Wood’s Landing because an access road was flooded by the rising Laramie River. And residents in the towns of Saratoga and Encampment are on alert for evacuations, as high snow melt floods the North Platte River. Flooding in Park and Fremont Counties has not led to evacuations, but officials are wary of rainfall this weekend.

Kathi Metzler is the Emergency Management Coordinator in Fremont County where she’s monitoring the Wind River.

Flooding may lead to evacuations in some Wyoming communities this week. Rapid snowmelt and heavy rain have brought the North Platte and Laramie rivers to flood levels. Kelly Ruiz with Wyoming Homeland Security says Saratoga, on the west side of the Snowy Range, will be hardest hit.

“Right now, the National Weather Service is predicting that the North Platte River at Saratoga, they’re predicting it to be at 10.58 on Friday. And that’s a record level of water. The previous record was set in 2011 at 10.49.”

All but one of Wyoming’s mountain pass highways will be open for Memorial Day weekend. The Wyoming Department of Transportation shuts down several of the state’s passes because of deep snow during winter months. Maintenance engineer Tim McGary says it wasn't clear they would be able to get Snowy Range Pass between Centennial and Saratoga open in time.

Wyoming population is continuing to grow, increasing by one percent in 2013. That’s according to a new report by the Department of Information and Administration. Senior economist Amy Bittner says migration to cities in the energy-rich central part of the state accounted for most of the growth.

“Several of those towns at the top of the list are in the central part of Wyoming,” she says. “You have Bar Nunn, you have Mills, which is also outside Casper, and then you have Douglas. You know, that’s due to the economic activity with the energy industry.”

Wyoming is starting a state lottery and vendors interested in selling tickets can now start submitting applications. Brian Gamroth is Chairman of the Wyoming Lottery Corporation. He says they’ve set a firm date of August 24 to begin selling the tickets. “With the applications out now, our first retailers will be picked in the next five or six weeks. And machines will start going out, training will start…There’s a lot to get done in a short amount of time.”

A 5000-well oil and gas project proposed for the Powder River Basin is drawing sharp criticism from a wildlife advocacy group. Erik Molvar with WildEarth Guardians says the drilling would take place right in the middle of critical sage grouse habitat.

“Well, the 5000 wells are projected in an area of over a million acres to the north of Douglas, stretching all the way up in the Thunder Basin National Grassland and including several core areas that have been proposed priority habitat for sage grouse,” Molvar says.

Contrary to its reputation as an independent state, Wyoming receives the sixth highest amount of federal financial aid of any state in the country -- almost 40 percent of state revenue -- according to the Tax Foundation.

Other states that rely heavily on federal aid are Louisiana, South Dakota and Tennessee. Tax economist Liz Malm says many states have higher numbers of people who qualify for federal programs such as Head Start and Medicaid. But Wyoming’s federal funding mostly comes from mineral royalties since over 40 percent of its lands are federally owned.

The AFL-CIO, a coalition group of labor unions, has released a report blasting industry for failing to make workplaces safer, especially in oil and gas. Wyoming has ranked as one of the five most deadly states to work in for the last ten years. In 2012, only North Dakota had more workplace fatalities. Kim Floyd, Executive Secretary for the Wyoming chapter of the AFL-CIO says it has a lot to do with the focus of both states’ economies.

On a routine winter patrol, Powder River Ranger District officials discovered over 100 trees carved with deep one-foot-sized arrows. District recreation staff member Craig Cope says very rarely has he seen such large-scale vandalizing of trees. And, he says, it was completely unnecessary.

“There’s much more minimum impact ways of route finding through the woods,” Cope says, “from G-P-S to the nylon ribbon flagging that you can put up temporarily and take down when you’re done.”

Denver-based Western Sugar Beet Cooperative has been fined $71,000 for violations that led to the death of an employee in January at its facility in Lovell. OSHA and the Wyoming Department of Workforce services allege that because no guard rails had been installed, 28-year-old Anfesa Galaktionoff fell through an opening in the floor into a production pit.

The company was issued 12 violations for serious and repeat workplace hazards. Wyoming Workforce Services Director Joan Evans said in a statement that the young woman’s death was completely unnecessary.

The price of beef hit an all-time record this quarter at $5.55 a pound—a full 25 cents higher than last year at this time. Ann Wittmann, Director of the Wyoming Beef Council, says it’s a case of supply and demand. A nation-wide drought has reduced herd sizes to the lowest they’ve been in 60 years and that is driving up the price for both consumers and producers.

Some of the best paying jobs in Wyoming are in the oil and gas industry, but only ten percent are held by women. Energy companies are trying to attract more women to fill open positions. But women who do want to enter the field for the higher-paying jobs face a lot of barriers. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards reports.

Pop-up restaurants and art galleries have been appearing in cities around the country and now the idea is starting to take off in Wyoming.

Laramie chef Lucas Barbulas has two pop-up restaurant events planned in the next couple weeks. He says the idea of opening a restaurant or art gallery for a single night or a few days is a concept that’s been around for decades.

Several remote communities in the state will be able to receive better internet service in the near future. Visionary Communications has announced a plan to expand its fiber optic line to connect the towns of Chugwater, Guernsey, Pinedale and Torrington to the rest of the state.

Rural states are bristling over proposed regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce emissions from wood stoves.

Currently, wood stove manufacturers must keep emissions down to 7.5 grams of particulates per hour. But the proposed rules would reduce the allowable amount to less than two grams over the next five years. Soot emissions are a serious public health concern in some areas of the country because they can cause lung problems and heart attacks.

Wyoming continues to have the worst gender pay gap in the country, and the gulf is widening. According to a new report released by the National Partnership for Women and Families. Wyoming women made only 64 cents for every dollar that men in the state made. That amounts to an annual wage gap of over $18,000 dollars.

Heavy snowfall this winter has crashed the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s budget. Budget Officer Kevin Hibbard says WYDOT budgeted $22-million, but the department over-spent that amount at the beginning of March.

“February this year was the most expensive month,” Hibbard says. “We had about 6-million dollars in snow control expenditures in the month of February.”

Wyoming has a long tradition of sheep ranching. The first flocks arrived with Mormon pioneers in the eighteen-eighties. By the early nineteen-hundreds there were six million sheep and Wyoming led the nation in wool production. Now, there are fewer than 400-thousand sheep in the state and competition in the global market is stiff. But Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards visited one family that believes that—against all odds--the life of the flockmaster is worth keeping alive.